B3: Better Border Biosecurity aims to develop approaches and tools to ensure harmful organisms are kept out of New Zealand, or, if they do manage to enter, are eradicated before establishing permanent populations.

The programme covers a wide range of organisms from bacterial and viral diseases to weeds and pests.

B3 Science is organised into the following five biosecurity themes:

This theme is the basis of most, if not all, strategic planning around biosecurity. Research in this theme seeks to identify border biosecurity hazards, assess the associated risks and determine optimal mitigation solutions.

This theme includes work on small traps and new lures to detect insect invaders earlier, surveillance models to design better surveillance programmes and methods to detect new harmful pathogens cost-effectively.

This work focuses on the impacts of rapidly increasing tourism and trade activity, which means that new organisms are being detected on a weekly basis, some of which could have significant economic impact on New Zealand.